Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive allow you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service, but Google Drive takes everything you own.

I took a look at Dropbox’s, Microsoft’s and Google’s terms and conditions to test this conclusion.

Dropbox’s terms and conditions

The C|Net post focused on this clause in the Dropbox terms which are only part of the story when it comes to Dropbox’s terms:

By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.

This clause clearly states that Dropbox doesn’t claim ownership of your data but the more important set of provisions are those dealing with the license Dropbox takes from its users when it comes to accessing and making use of the data you upload to Dropbox. Bear in mind that all of these services will have a license of some sort. A license is a set of permissions you, as the user, give to the provider and that enables the provider to receive, manipulate and otherwise handle your data. It’s an essential component and nothing to be alarmed by in itself (at least not if you are comfortable with the basic idea of a provider having access to your data as part of your use of the particular service).

We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).

To be clear, aside from the rare exceptions we identify in our Privacy Policy, no matter how the Services change, we won’t share your content with others, including law enforcement, for any purpose unless you direct us to. How we collect and use your information generally is also explained in our Privacy Policy.

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Sharing Your Stuff

The Services provide features that allow you to share your stuff with others or to make it public. There are many things that users may do with that stuff (for example, copy it, modify it, re-share it). Please consider carefully what you choose to share or make public. Dropbox has no responsibility for that activity.

The basic idea is clear, though. Dropbox requires your permission to run its service and you agree to give it whatever permissions it requires to do that. The problem with this simplistic approach is that it is too simplistic and vague. As a user you don’t really know what the license’s parameters are beyond whatever is not required to operate the service.

Microsoft Services Agreement

These terms and conditions are not limited to SkyDrive but apply to a range of Microsoft services:

It’s a contract that governs your use of any Windows Live, Bing, MSN, Microsoft Office Live, or Office.com services or software, or other Microsoft services or software that directly display or link to this agreement (the “service”). By using or accessing the service, you confirm that you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the service. Thanks.

This is significant because, unlike with Dropbox where your license relates to a fairly specific service, the license you grant to Microsoft encompasses a variety of services which are increasingly interconnected. This is very similar to Google’s terms (below). These terms and conditions are more specific than Dropbox’s licensing provisions and also contain a statement that Microsoft doesn’t claim ownership of users’ data:

5. Your content

Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.

You control who may access your content. If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you’ve chosen, then you agree that anyone you’ve shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don’t want others to have those rights, don’t use the service to share your content.

You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.

Please respect the rights of artists, inventors, and creators. Content may be protected by copyright. People appearing in content may have a right to control the use of their image. If you share content on the service in a way that infringes others’ copyrights, other intellectual property rights, or privacy rights, you’re breaching this contract. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights necessary for you to grant the rights in this section and the use of the content doesn’t violate any law. We won’t pay you for your content. We may refuse to publish your content for any or no reason. We may remove your content from the service at any time if you breach this contract or if we cancel or suspend the service.

You’re responsible for backing up the data that you store on the service. If your service is suspended or canceled, we may permanently delete your data from our servers. We have no obligation to return data to you after the service is suspended or canceled. If data is stored with an expiration date, we may also delete the data as of that date. Data that is deleted may be irretrievable.

A couple things emerge from these terms and conditions. Firstly, when you share your data with other people, you give them a limited license to use your data “solely in connection with the service and other products and services made by Microsoft”. Similarly, the license users grant to Microsoft in respect of their data is limited to permissions required “solely to the extent necessary to provide the service”.

Google’s terms and conditions

Google Drive is governed by Google’s Terms and the license provisions are fairly similar to Dropbox’s and SkyDrive’s, at least when it comes to the basic approach. As with the other two services, Google doesn’t claim ownership of your data. Here are the license provisions:

Your Content in our Services

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.

The license Google users grant to Google is notionally for the “limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones” but it is somewhat open ended in that Google could develop new services or modify existing ones that require your data to be used in ways you couldn’t have anticipated when signing up. This is fairly similar to Microsoft’s Services Agreement which also uses one license for all its services.

What does this all mean?

The C|Net article contains this rather alarming set of statements:

The last sentence makes all the difference. While these rights are limited to essentially making Google Drive better and to develop new services run by Google, the scope is not defined and could extend far further than one would expect.

Simply put: there’s no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.

The chances are Google’s terms will never be an issue — and it is likely over-zealous lawyers making sure Google doesn’t somehow get screwed in the long run by a lawsuit — but it may be enough to push away a great number of entrepreneurs and creative workers who rely on holding on to the rights to their own work.

The fact is, according to its terms, Google may own any code or product you ultimately upload to its new Google Drive service, whether you realise it or not.

These statements, particularly the last one, are factually incorrect and misleading. They are also not uncommon when journalists attempt to navigate terms and conditions without the time or inclination to read them carefully. Google doesn’t claim ownership of its users’ data. Its license is fairly broad and that is understandable given the wide range of services it offers. At the same time, there is scope for the already broad license to be applied in ways users may not have considered. The specific permissions users grant to Google are substantially the same as those users grant to Microsoft (Google is more specific and lists more individual permissions but they are not fundamentally different).

The big difference here is between Dropbox’s terms, on one hand, and Google’s and Microsoft’s on the other hand. Dropbox offers a fairly specific set of services so users have more certainty as to what they are licensing Dropbox to do with their data. Google and Microsoft offer a range of interconnected services governed by a single legal framework and the potential scope for their licenses is far broader when you consider that their users may be using a variety of Google and Microsoft services with different functionality.

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

This license was as close to an assumption of ownership as Facebook has ever come. It was so close to assuming ownership that the difference between ownership and licensing user content was a matter of semantics. The controversies over the Facebook terms did a lot to create more awareness of users’ expectations and what it means to be a better licensor. The current generation of terms and conditions reflect that, for the most part (there are still some shockers). These modern licenses are clearer, limited in varying degrees but are often necessarily broad to enable these services to function effectively. I agree with the one statement in the C|Net article, though –